Stratford Central Secondary School - Collegian Yearbook (Stratford, Ontario Canada)

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COLLEGIAN, 1930 the.fl.rst place we should measure our ability to serve our fellows in the position under consideration. We were placed on this earth to help lighten the burdens of others. Let us carefully consider this. I should place your cwn desires next. It is of paramount importance that the work benagreeable. Otherwise we should never succeed. Then comes one's abilities. It would of course be foolish for one who could not enunciate clearly to enter law. Many would place abilities before de- sires. I do not agree with them because if you want a thing badly enough you will work hard until you get it. Even in the case cited above, by hard work one could probably overcome that impediment. As a fourth requirement I would place honesty. If a job is of such a nature that it requires that you give up your honesty, shun it as you would the plague. Lincoln said, If you cannot be an honest lawyer, be honest without being a lawyer. The last consideration is that necessary evil, money. Unfortunately most of us can not forget the remuneration in any career we undertake. We should early in life formulate cur ideals. Ideals are the winning-post towards which the race of success is run. It is the race which is the valuable part of life, not the winning of the race. Care should be taken in selecting our ideals that they do not turn to ashes in our mouths when we reach them. Therefore ideals should be noble. I have said success is the attaining to some degree the ideals one sets before one. Ideals which can be completely attained in this life are not very good. Our ideals should be so lofty that while we advance to- wards them. we shall never reach them. As Browning so inimitably says, Ah, but a m-an's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for ? I come now to a very important factor in success. I refer to habit, that property in the human mind analogous to the facility with which paper bends along a previous fold compared to the bending of a new fold. Habits either are your best friends or worst enemies. It is habit that gives one student ninety per cent. while another gets forty per cent. Williams James says, Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nature or our early choice. It is well for the world that in most of us by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster and will never soften again. We see then that habits are highly important. How can they be changed if it is necessary? William James lays dowln three maxims which I shall quote verbatim. CID IN THE ACQUISITION OF A NIEW HABIT OR THE LEAVING OFF OF AN OLD ONE, WE MU-ST TAKE CARE TO LAUNCH. OVURSELVES WITH AS STRONG AND DE- CIDEID INITIATIVE AS POSSIBLE. That is, bring all the com- ponents of environment into line behind the habit. For example, in making a habit of early rising get an alarm clock that will not let you sleep and openly boast to everyone that you are going to arise regularly at six o'clock. Thus we make sleep impossible and use our pride to get us out of bed. The second maxim. is H125 NEVER SUFFEQR. AIN EX'C'EP'TION TO OCCUR UNTIL THE N-EW HABIT IS SE'OUlRElLY ROOTED IN YOUR LIFE. To understand the importance of this let us consider it fronT the psychological standpoint. Habits are regarded as paths of discharge along the nerves. Every time we perform one specific action it becomes easier and more natural for the impulse to discharge -131

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COLLEGIAN, l93O Contact with student-life long enough to come to the conclusion that failure in scholarship in nine cases out of ten is due to the student's failure to give his or her best efforts and best thoughts to the task at hand. Character must be built upon a sense of responsibility for the task that confronts a student whether in school, in college, or in after life, and there is no stimulating tonic for the strengthening of the character equal to that of the satisfaction of the day's work faithfully done. Iam sure all appreciate the many delightful distractions in school life. They should prove, however. a help and not a hindrance in a school career. The pleasures of life become permanently satisfying only when there is a background of work definitely and conscientiously accomplished. The program of true happiness and content in student- life is the task of the day conscientiously faced and performed, then the hours of recreation, personal contacts, and the companionships in the common pursuits of campus life will be justly prized. I believe that every student of Stratford Collegiate is most anxious to uphold her glorious traditions, but this can be accomplished only by each and everyone devoting his very best efforts to that which refines and up- lifts human life. S UC C ESS Success is an extremely important subject to us. What is Suc- cess ? The dictionary says a favourable termination of anything at- tempted. I think a more lucid definition would be: Success is the at- taining to some degree the ideals set before one. I say to some de- gree, advisedly as you will see in a following paragraph. Success is not to be judged from the outside, but the inside. You and you only will be able to judge whether you are a success or not. Likewise it is for you and you only to determine whether you will be a success or not. It does not depend upon the amount of brains you have or the amount of money behind you. It is the amount of work YOU do. Many say, Oh, yes, I will be a success! Wlhen I leave school I will work hard. What I do to-day doesn't count. That is the sen- tence of failure of many men who are working for less than twenty dollars a week. Every day each and every student is building into him- self the results of his labour. If you do not acquire 'NOW those habits and powers of mind that will make you a success you will probably never get them. You can not change the working of your mind with the act of stepping over the threshold from school into life, big and menacing. Let us consider some of the things that help us towards success. One of the first essentials of success is that we choose a career. This is seemingly a ridiculous statement. Surely, you say, everybody has some ambitions. It is sad, but, I believe true, that very many high-school students have no ambition other than to start working at an early age to make a little pocket money. In considering a profession or trade it is well to keep some re- quirements in mind with which to measure your prospective job. In -12-

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